Movie of the Week: “Fahrenheit 451”

These days, directors are expected to talk up their films, and for good reason: it’s likely that François Truffaut’s remarks about his 1966 film “Fahrenheit 451” (which I discuss in this clip) are in large part responsible for the film’s wrongly low reputation. The film was something of Truffaut’s white whale: it took him four years to put the production together; along the way, he turned down some other significant projects, including “Bonnie and Clyde,” which the screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman had written with him in mind. The shoot of “Fahrenheit 451,” which took place mainly in Great Britain, proved difficult for Truffaut, in part because he didn’t speak English, but above all because he had trouble working with the lead actor, Oskar Werner (who had played Jules in Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim”). Instead of keeping their conflicts out of the tabloids, Truffaut aired them himself: he kept a diary of the shoot and published excerpts from it in Cahiers du Cinéma. There, Truffaut gave an account of his difficult and unpleasant experience, with particular reference to his shock when Werner turned up on set one day, toward the end of the shoot, with a new haircut, which Truffaut was obligated to mask in the shooting for the sake of continuity. Truffaut was his own worst publicist, and it’s unfortunate: “Fahrenheit 451” is a drastic change in direction (pun intended), and a worthy one. It’s Truffaut’s first color film, and he revels in the new creative dimension that color opens for him. As a futuristic science-fiction film, the project opens the door to abstractions—visual as well as intellectual—that had been remote from Truffaut’s earlier films. Critics and viewers didn’t forgive him for surprising them; the film remains audaciously surprising even now.